Hi,
I've been trying to stream some .mkv files from my Windows Home Server to my Nexus 7 and anything over 1GB runs like a dog, choppy and slow (using any media player). It works fine locally using OTG or from the internal SD partition. The problem appears to be the wireless, so I did some testing using 3 AP's dotted around the house.
Using ES Explorer and copying a 1.3GB file from my WHS to my Nexus 7...
Billion 7800N - 1.5-2 MB/s
Mikrotik 951 - 500-600 KB/s
Netgear WR802T - 1.2-1.5 MB/s
Unfortunately the Mikrotik is the one near the bedroom, where I stream the most!
Question: Whats the best throughput you have seen via WIFI - and what router are you using? I have conceded that the Mikrotik is cack for WIFI, so I'm looking a purchasing a new AP / Router. The current "top dog" for speed appears to be the Asus RT-N66U (I've seen on various sites). It's expensive but I just need it to work, anyone use the RT-N66U with Nexus 7 for streaming have an opinion before I buy? Would be much appreciated.
Thanks
No N66U users out there??
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dannysmith43 said:
Hi,
I've been trying to stream some .mkv files from my Windows Home Server to my Nexus 7 and anything over 1GB runs like a dog, choppy and slow (using any media player). It works fine locally using OTG or from the internal SD partition. The problem appears to be the wireless, so I did some testing using 3 AP's dotted around the house.
Using ES Explorer and copying a 1.3GB file from my WHS to my Nexus 7...
Billion 7800N - 1.5-2 MB/s
Mikrotik 951 - 500-600 KB/s
Netgear WR802T - 1.2-1.5 MB/s
Unfortunately the Mikrotik is the one near the bedroom, where I stream the most!
Question: Whats the best throughput you have seen via WIFI - and what router are you using? I have conceded that the Mikrotik is cack for WIFI, so I'm looking a purchasing a new AP / Router. The current "top dog" for speed appears to be the Asus RT-N66U (I've seen on various sites). It's expensive but I just need it to work, anyone use the RT-N66U with Nexus 7 for streaming have an opinion before I buy? Would be much appreciated.
Thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, not sure if this will help before you purchase an RT-N66U - but maybe offer some insight and maybe you won't need to spend anything...
I've got a couple of different setups I have had success with for streaming at home and have no issues with larger mkv files...none of which depend on Windows or WHS for "streaming" the files. That said, I think you might be ok with your router and might want to start with looking at the source. Also, I have 2 routers in my home, one is set up as a "bridge" so that I can access my wifi without having to have a second SSID and password for the additional AP. The second router (the bridge) is not as robust as the main, but still works just fine.
Unless I'm mistaken (I know windows in general doesn't, and as far as I know Win Home Server is the same), Windows isn't going to natively handle your mkv files without a codec pack or some type of splitter and I think that's where you're running into issue.
But I personally don't use windows itself to stream anything to my devices directly, and I do have a box with WHS on it. However, I do my use my other windows boxes with both Plex and XBMC and they handle larger MKV files fine.
I also have had success with large MKV files using a cheap Pogoplug that I picked up for $15 and playing them from a flash drive hooked up to it! (its like this http://www.adorama.com/COCPOGOP21.html)
That said, Plex (http://www.plexapp.com/) lets your pc do the heavy lifting with the transcoding (which is essentially the same that's occurring with your windows home server, but it handles mkvs) for the device.
There's also XBMC (http://xbmc.org/about/) just "serves" the file and using something like UPNPLAY (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=cx.hoohol.silanoid&hl=en) and MXPlayer (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mxtech.videoplayer.ad&hl=en) should work fine.
As far as the pogoplug - it doesn't like the mkv extension, but if you rename the file to an "mp4" extension, the pogo app will allow you transcode or play original. I don't care to have it transcode anything, so I select "play original" with the app on the nexus and let mxplayer do the work - no sweat. In addition to playing at home, that option (as well as Plex) allows you to stream when away from home (3g/4g or wifi) without having to punch a hole in your firewall to access it from off site.
One thing you might consider is ripping some type of large videos in a couple other formats other than mkv and see if your WHS handles them better. If so, it's isolated to MKVs and your WHS and you likely need to re-encode to a different format or try another option. Also, have you tried disconnecting the router you feel is "slow" or not connect to that AP and see if the movies stream better from another AP? If it is the same, it's related to the MKV and WHS.
Hope that helps some.
Hello there peeps!
Im thinking of getting rid of my old laptop as my torrentbox/Kodi and fileserver. Its noisy, draws lots of power and it can barely handle 1080p HEVC movies. So Im really longing to buy a Nvidia Shield TV 16GB
Im thinking of buying the 16GB version, putting a 128GB micro-sd card in it and use a powered usb3.0 HUB to connect my current 3 external HDDs to it.
My plans is to let the 128GB micro-sd card act as the torrent partition and storage for the games and apps. When the apps are finished Im moving the stuff to the three external NTFS HDDs and store it on them. All this would be nice to be able to manage with my Android phone. Im thinking that it might be hard on the unit to handle torrents at the same time we watch movies or play games. Is there an app to paus the torrents if the rest needs more resources, or make some kind of script?
Will all this work? Ive read that the Shield TV cant handle more than two external USBs thanks to the limitatons of Android but this can be fixed by rooting it. Is it correct?
You need to get a SMB server app working on it. Google: Funkyfresh Samba
uTorrent has an Android version.
I think Android can handle more than two ext HDD's. My sister has 4-5 HDD's connected to her AFTV, same with my cousin. Try StickMount.
I don't know but I think it's going to be hard to do what you want. I'd buy an Asus ChromeBox, put Win10 on it and use that for Kodi MySQL server, torrent, media, etc.
Ive been curious about this, when you say your sister had 4-5 HDDs connected to AFTV, im assuming she has them connected via some sort of usb hub?
I wouldn't use an SD card for long-term torrenting as they're not very good at handling frequent writing.
hobs0n said:
Hello there peeps!
Im thinking of getting rid of my old laptop as my torrentbox/Kodi and fileserver. Its noisy, draws lots of power and it can barely handle 1080p HEVC movies. So Im really longing to buy a Nvidia Shield TV 16GB
Im thinking of buying the 16GB version, putting a 128GB micro-sd card in it and use a powered usb3.0 HUB to connect my current 3 external HDDs to it.
My plans is to let the 128GB micro-sd card act as the torrent partition and storage for the games and apps. When the apps are finished Im moving the stuff to the three external NTFS HDDs and store it on them. All this would be nice to be able to manage with my Android phone. Im thinking that it might be hard on the unit to handle torrents at the same time we watch movies or play games. Is there an app to paus the torrents if the rest needs more resources, or make some kind of script?
Will all this work? Ive read that the Shield TV cant handle more than two external USBs thanks to the limitatons of Android but this can be fixed by rooting it. Is it correct?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So heres my experience so far: Currently I have 1 external usb 3.0 HDD connected to my shield tv. using an android app called servers ultimate pro, I was able to create multiple file servers. The nice thing is that shield tv is already low powered, but can even go into sleep mode and still run the server (i have a feeling sleep mode just turns off the screen). with servers ultimate, you can get lots of configuration options, limiting the amount of users, ip addresses that can access, you can set up basic rules, and notifications for things like if the server stops or starts, to email, text, pop up a notification, etc. Its pretty nice.
But heres the catch: I've been searching for a solution for over a month now, but transfer rates are slow im getting 5-10MBps on average, but i know the network is capable of more. after searching, it seems to be a limitation of either android, or the protocols the app is using. Another user on here pointed out to me that the SMB protocol for instance, seems to be running SMB v1 (which is already up to like V3- or V4, which are more feature rich and capable of much faster speeds)
then theres the issue of what devices will be accessing it. So far, ive tried my android phone, my windows 10 PC, and an iphone. the android phone can see the servers just fine when configured properly, iphone didn't seem to want to work without any sort of specialized app (which honestly i didn't even try after that point), and windows 10 works, but if you want to map a network drive, your going to need the SMB protocol, and even then it took several weeks of google searching until several tweaks, registry settings, etc finally allowed windows 10 to see my server.
I don't torrent, so unfortunately can't help you on that front, but like another user pointed out, using the sd card will just wear out the amount of times it can read/write. if it does work out for your needs, why not just save directly to the external HDDs?
For the record, I was able to stream using things like kodi or another media player, but i do notice that any initial loading takes several seconds. for example, initial playback will take several seconds to load, but once the video plays, it plays smooth and doesnt stutter or pause, UNLESS i were to try fast forwarding or skipping to another section, then the video takes several seconds again. this all works for my personal needs (for now) but other users might want more demand.
hope any of this helps.
unvaluablespace said:
Ive been curious about this, when you say your sister had 4-5 HDDs connected to AFTV, im assuming she has them connected via some sort of usb hub?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yea, both my sister and cousin have the 10 port USB 2.0 hub from Amazon working fine on their Amazon Fire TV's.
Cool, thats good to know. I've been kind of curious about this for in the future (i don't see myself using more than 4 HDD's for whatever server setup i use) Hopefully the shield wont have an issue with this, either. Now just trying to figure out my transfer speed issue. lol
Thank you very much for the experience and help!
This certainly learned me very valuable points
what is the point of putting a server on shield tv?
can you download torrents directly to the shield (hd)?
and would plex be able to see these files?
I have personally done exactly what you are looking for with one of my shield boxes. I installed a Linux chroot on my shield tv (I ended up flashing foll android as it was easier), installed transmission-cli in there, and ran kodi on top then enabled media sharing, and put an ssh server on the machine. Works fantastically.
what does this all enable to do?
This is pretty close to my plans, minus the torrent box and fileserver.
my plan is to load up my new external drive and copy everything from my laptop and existing externals into one location (so I can eliminate duplicates) and then move it to the SHIELD TV and setup KODI so it sees all my files and use it for playback (I can always routinely plan file transfers to it manually thru the USB and computer when I need to add new content), but it would be nice to be able to access the external over the network if possible.
kdb424 said:
I have personally done exactly what you are looking for with one of my shield boxes. I installed a Linux chroot on my shield tv (I ended up flashing foll android as it was easier), installed transmission-cli in there, and ran kodi on top then enabled media sharing, and put an ssh server on the machine. Works fantastically.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Uhm so you are running some kind of Linux or what is foll Android?
unvaluablespace said:
So heres my experience so far: Currently I have 1 external usb 3.0 HDD connected to my shield tv. using an android app called servers ultimate pro, I was able to create multiple file servers. The nice thing is that shield tv is already low powered, but can even go into sleep mode and still run the server (i have a feeling sleep mode just turns off the screen). with servers ultimate, you can get lots of configuration options, limiting the amount of users, ip addresses that can access, you can set up basic rules, and notifications for things like if the server stops or starts, to email, text, pop up a notification, etc. Its pretty nice.
But heres the catch: I've been searching for a solution for over a month now, but transfer rates are slow im getting 5-10MBps on average, but i know the network is capable of more. after searching, it seems to be a limitation of either android, or the protocols the app is using. Another user on here pointed out to me that the SMB protocol for instance, seems to be running SMB v1 (which is already up to like V3- or V4, which are more feature rich and capable of much faster speeds)
then theres the issue of what devices will be accessing it. So far, ive tried my android phone, my windows 10 PC, and an iphone. the android phone can see the servers just fine when configured properly, iphone didn't seem to want to work without any sort of specialized app (which honestly i didn't even try after that point), and windows 10 works, but if you want to map a network drive, your going to need the SMB protocol, and even then it took several weeks of google searching until several tweaks, registry settings, etc finally allowed windows 10 to see my server.
I don't torrent, so unfortunately can't help you on that front, but like another user pointed out, using the sd card will just wear out the amount of times it can read/write. if it does work out for your needs, why not just save directly to the external HDDs?
For the record, I was able to stream using things like kodi or another media player, but i do notice that any initial loading takes several seconds. for example, initial playback will take several seconds to load, but once the video plays, it plays smooth and doesnt stutter or pause, UNLESS i were to try fast forwarding or skipping to another section, then the video takes several seconds again. this all works for my personal needs (for now) but other users might want more demand.
hope any of this helps.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the all the valuable info!
Using the Shield TV as a torrentbox/fileserver/NAS is only temporary until I can afford a real NAS, or preferably get a mini Linux box running as a VPN server and router but that's in the future, in fact Shield tv is also in the future since I can't afford it now =)
But back to your comments, I checked out Ultimate Pro and it seems it's dead but maybe some of its servers works good Regarding SMB I'm thinking of getting another app for SMB sharing.
Another thing I'm wondering is the multitasking abilities of the Shield TV, sure it's by far the most powerful Android TV box but how can it handle torrenting, SMB sharing, running Kodi at the same time? Or do you have to manually manage it? Or get some apps that let you set up certain priorities? And will it be able to game on the Shield while Kodi/SMB/torrents running in the background?
hobs0n said:
Thanks for the all the valuable info!
Using the Shield TV as a torrentbox/fileserver/NAS is only temporary until I can afford a real NAS, or preferably get a mini Linux box running as a VPN server and router but that's in the future, in fact Shield tv is also in the future since I can't afford it now =)
But back to your comments, I checked out Ultimate Pro and it seems it's dead but maybe some of its servers works good Regarding SMB I'm thinking of getting another app for SMB sharing.
Another thing I'm wondering is the multitasking abilities of the Shield TV, sure it's by far the most powerful Android TV box but how can it handle torrenting, SMB sharing, running Kodi at the same time? Or do you have to manually manage it? Or get some apps that let you set up certain priorities? And will it be able to game on the Shield while Kodi/SMB/torrents running in the background?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't torrent, so unfortunately I can't help you there, but I have tried using my file server in multiple ways: file transfers & streaming video, while running another app, even streaming games. Here are a few examples of things i've tried:
file transferring a big file to my pc, while gamestreaming on the nvidia shield tv at the same time (worked great. I saw no issues during this time)
file transferring a big file to my pc, while running a local app such as netflix, emulators, youtube, (as you can see i tried both maximizing bandwidth, while even testing lag with cpu intensive tasks. again, worked great)
streaming a 1080p movie from the shield tv, to my pc, while gamestreaming from the same pc, back to the shield tv (seemed to work fine. honestly didnt test this for extended period.)
streaming a 1080p movie from the shield tv to my pc, while running local apps on shield tv such as netflix, emulators, youtube, etc (once again, seemed to work fine)
So as you can see, the shield tv seemed to handle everything i threw at it rather well. i even tried multiple apps for multitasking on the shield and i just honestly did not see any performance hints with the media server, aside from anything youd normally expect on the shield tv. keep in mind i am running on a gigabit ethernet network, wired on both ends, from the shield tv to the router, and router to the pc.
my only issue with it all is as mentioned before: transfer speeds are just barely fast enough, even though i know my network and the device is capable of much faster speeds, but the cpu and ram on the shield tv seemed to handle everything i tried rather well.
as for your comment about trying other smb apps, ive gone through several, and the ones i was able to manage to get working, all ended up with the same speeds as with ultimate servers pro. :\ If you can find something that gives you faster speeds, i would love to hear about it so i can try it. i tried ftp server, smb server, webdav server, etc and all seem to max out at about the same speed.
Thanks for your reply!
It really seems the Shield is awesome and powerful to handle multitasking! I'm longing to get my own!
Crappy about the SMB speeds, let's find solutions to that problems
Hm I havent found any real data on the speed between a computer and an Android device when it comes to SMB...
When I transfer between my old gaming laptop from the external usb2.0 HDDs to my Xperia Z3, I get between 700KB/s to 1100KB/s.
The laptop is connected with Ethernet cable to the Netgear CG3799 router and the Z3 is connected with full connection on 802.11N 5Ghz. Altho the laptop is pretty sweaty atm, its converting old DVDs to HEVC and downloading around 15 torrents
Ill compare speeds later when the laptop isnt as busy
What kind of speeds do you peeps get when transfering between Android devices other devices?
Which Samba app are you using?
Hey folks,
I'm trying the same now. Had an Odroid XU4 as file and MySQL Server and try to replace it for an all in one Shield TV Solution.
I'm running a rooted Shield with SambaDroid for the SMB Share which works fine. And KSWEB Server for MySQL and ftp.
Sometimes it seems like the apps are closing in the background, I don't know why, seems to be a android multitadking problem to free up RAM.
But my biggest problem is the transfer speeds. No matter what protocoll (smb/ftp) I'm not getting more then 8 MB/s read out of the box. I tried to read from internal memory, sdcard and my external HDD. All came out with the same speed connected over GBit LAN to my PC.
Write side it much faster with 20 MB/s what I do not really understand but you need root to write to external memory like sdcard or usb.
So far it works, but it is less then optimal compared to my Ordoid XU4 what did 80MB/s but has no HDMI 2.0 output :/
Maybe Android 6.0 brings more speed for the network because It has to be bottlenecked somewhere in the OS, FTP and SMB showing the same speeds.
What's funny is I was actually doing the reverse of what you're doing. I got my Shield as an Android media center device since my Odroid U2 never seemed up to my standards with Kodi. When HardKernel came out with the XU4 I scooped it up and made it my webserver, after seeing an Android TV rom out for it, I flashed it and now Kodi's UI will lag like crazy after about a half hour of usage.
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I recently bought a Samsung Smart TV and I am trying to create a media hub to attach my external hard drive to so I can watch them on my TV. I want to know if I can use Shield to attach 8 TB hard drive with all my movies and shows on it and watch them on the samsung tv in 4K. I also want to be able to wireless transfer files to/from my external drive using laptop. I tried watching with my laptop (connected via HDMI) and it buffers when it comes to 4K. So does shield help me with this or do I need a different device for this?
I thought the purpose of "smart" TVs was that they could do streaming and such by themselves?
It can stream but content such as 4K buffers because there just isn't CPU power inside them.
The Shield should be able to do that, but I haven't tried it so I can't say for certain. You'll need to connect it to your laptop by the micro-USB cable or install a server app to transfer files.
I want to stream it using content on my external usb drive. So that way I don't have to keep my laptop on all the time. Can I just plug my external drive to one of the USB ports on to the shield and stream it directly? Will there be any buffering or any type of lag when doing this? (Again this is with 4K content)
I can't answer that because I don't have a 4K TV, but it has a fast processor and plays 1080p content just fine. A quick benchmark put the USB3 read speed at about 95 MB/sec.
It can definitely handle 4K media, it is even somewhat future proofed with support for HDR 4K video. There isn't really an easy way to share files from your laptop to it with the Harddrive plugged into the SHIELD TV. I would recommend buying a NAS and connecting your drive unto that since all the NAS will do is send the files over your network to the SHIELD TV. As long as you either have an AC router or gigabit ethernet you should be fine.
Do you recommend any cheap NAS that works? Does it need to have processing power for encoding streams? Or that is done via Shield?
Synology products are nice. You order the hard drive(s) separately.
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